FLATTENER #2
cloud.jpg
This is a cloud which represents the Netscape and what we know today as the Web. When people refer to it they usually say "The Cloud". It gives you the capability to be on the same page anywhere in the world as well as saving images and files.

Vocabulary:
Netscape: A commercial internet browser
Modem: A modem pieces together outgoing digital signals from a computer or another digital device to analyze signals
Lingua franca: A language that is adopted between different speaking people to form a common language
Fastidious: Very concerned with accuracy and detail
Interoperable: Able to exchange and use information

Summary:
What we today know as the World Wide Web has come a long way since it first began. In the late 1980s and early 1990s using the Internet was basically only for people with expertise in the business and was done over black and white text terminals. Tim Berners-Lee created the programming language we know today as HTMLs. These HTMLs allowed people to link pages, share images, and basically everything we do today on the Internet. The first Netscape was introduced in December 1994 which took the HTML and made it what we know today as the Web with it's images, words, videos, basically anything. Because of the Netscape, the Web became user-friendly and enabled everybody to use the Internet because of its new found simplicity. Netscape was available to all major operating systems so that everyone could see the same data no matter what computer they were on. On 8/5/95 Netscape "went public" and began selling stock. Friedman states that this is the beginning of the "dot com bubble" that has flattened out world and gave us all the ability to literally be on the same "page".

Current Event:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/world/asia/china-toughens-restrictions-on-internet-use.html?_r=0

Our Response: This article is about China putting restrictions on the Netscape. The purpose of the Netscape and HTML's was for the freedom to do as you please. These restrictions are making it harder for the government to keep secrets along with businesses. So, China is requiring Internet users to provide their full names to service providers to pin point victims.

Where do you think the world would be without HTMLs or the Netscape? So basically where do you think the world would be without the easily accessible Internet? What would be different in terms of jobs, education, and every day life? Would it be better or worse?